Circle of the Moon

by H. P. Mallory

  CIRCLE OF THE MOON

  Book 2 of the

  Mists of Magic and Mayhem series

  by

  H.P. Mallory

  Copyright ©2020 by HP Mallory

  Published by HP Mallory at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ALSO BY H.P. MALLORY:

  Reverse Harem Romance Series:

  (Writing as Plum Pascal)

  The Sacred Oath Series

  The Happily Never After Series

  The 9 Hells Series

  The Dungeon Raider Series

  The Masked Lords Series

  The F My Life Series

  The Keys Series

  Paranormal Romance Series:

  (Writing as HP Mallory)

  Mists of Magic and Mayhem Series

  The Lily Harper Series

  The Dulcie O'Neil Series:

  (Over 1 million downloads of the series!)

  The Jolie Wilkins Series:

  (New York Times Bestselling Series!)

  The Sinjin Sinclair Series

  The Peyton Clark Series

  TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  ONE

  SINJIN

  It was late afternoon when I arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, the sun was low enough in the sky that it did not trouble me as I strolled from my taxi to the lobby of the little hotel that overlooked the harbor. It was ‘cozy’, to use the polite euphemism.

  “Good evening, sir,” said the beaming girl on reception, whose face looked to have been varnished into a permanent smile. “Welcome to the Harbor View.”

  “Thank you,” I replied politely. “I have a room booked.”

  “Can I ask the name, sir?”

  “Sinclair. Sinjin Sinclair.” It might have been more prudent to travel under an alias, but I have never liked to do so. I am proud of my name and when people meet Sinjin Sinclair, I like them to know they have just met Sinjin Sinclair.

  “Let me just check that for you, sir.” The girl turned to the computer. “Is that a British accent?”

  “Yes. English.”

  “I love the English accent!”

  “Yours is very pretty too.”

  The girl blushed. She could not have been more than nineteen; so much left to see, so much life left to live. Alas, I would leave her alone. She was blonde and, as such, did not resemble my tempest.

  “Here we are. You’re in the Captain’s Room.”

  “Was the Admiral’s not available?”

  The girl giggled. “It’s just a name, sir. Would you like me to get someone to carry your bag?”

  “I can manage, thank you.”

  “It was a silly question to ask… you can obviously… manage.” She flicked a doe-eyed look at me and I realized I was being flirted with.

  This was not unusual. Obviously. A man with my exceptional looks must expect to be the object of girlish fancy. The age of the girl did make me think though—I was more than thirty times her age! My goodness! That was quite a shocker!

  The girl showed me to my accommodations and I gave her a ten dollar tip. She, meanwhile, chatted away about this and that. Her voice quite reminded me of a jolly songbird.

  “Have you been to the States before?” she turned to look at me as she asked.

  “Oh, yes, many times.”

  “I guessed you were a world traveler. You’ve just got that look, you know? Have you been to Salem before?”

  “I have.”

  “You must like it here to come back.”

  I shrugged. “This town of witches has grown on me to some degree. I must confess I did not enjoy my first trip here.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  I chuckled. “Not your fault, my dear. You were not even a twinkle in your great-great-great grandfather’s eye.”

  The girl giggled again. She thought I was joking. “You must be older than you look.”

  “That would be fair to say, yes.”

  “I’m older than I look too.”

  I smiled. “I doubt it.” She opened her mouth to convince me she was of age but I interrupted. “I believe you have a restaurant on the premises? From what hours is dinner served?”

  “The dining room’s open now, sir.” The girl switched back to professional, parroting words she probably said every day of her life. “It closes at eleven.”

  “And a bar?”

  “Open till midnight.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  She beamed, went to the door, then turned back. “If you need anything, I’m downstairs all night.”

  “All night?”

  “Someone’s got to be. Though it does get lonely.” She was quite… direct. These Americans—they were going to be the death of me! Or the undeath, I suppose.

  “Thank you,” I repeated, ending the conversation.

  The girl appeared a little embarrassed and hurried out. It was not her fault; it was the curse I bore of being ridiculously handsome and overtly sexually desirable in the eyes of all women and quite a number of men, though it did have its compensations. Or, at least, it used to.

  It was strange to think about. Two hundred years ago I would have drained that girl dry. A hundred years ago I would have drunk her blood, but allowed her to live. Twenty years ago I would have taken her to my bed, but probably not bitten her. And now? Now she was just a hotel receptionist. How a man can change with time.

  If she had looked like Bryn then perhaps things would have gone differently, but there was nothing of my tempest in the bubbly girl. Truth be told, there was never enough of Bryn in any woman I met.

  I began to unpack. Though I was only here for two nights—and one probably would have been enough—I still packed like a gentleman traveler, which meant a change of clothes for every possible eventuality. The world had moved on, and it was only fools like Laucian who clung to the old ways, but I would admit to having a nostalgia for a time when a man who traveled without a smoking jacket, dinner jacket, shooting jacket, hunting jacket, tweed jacket and something appropriate for entertaining, was considered to be packing very light, indeed.

  I did not go quite that far these days, but I still brought a selection of clothes. If Bryn had been here, she would have laughed at me for bringing so many outfits, when all of them were in the same uniform black. She always found it comical that I put such care into the way in which I dressed while she wore clothes for comfort, convenience, and ease of movement, should she find herself in a fight.

  We had been an odd pair. I wondered if her dress sense had changed over the years. Had she become more Mom-ish?

  The train of thought made me maudlin and I focused on arranging my black shirts in a pleasing order in the little closet.

  ###

  The hotel was small and somewhat lacking in the amenities one might expect from a five-star establishment (much more my style), but I was content to ‘rough it’ for a few nights. The view from the window of the Captain’s Room gave onto the harbor, and I could see across to the town cemetery. It made me think of my first trip here, which I had alluded to in conversati
on with the young receptionist. That had been in the late seventeenth century, at the height of those events for which the town was still best known.

  There were few towns in the world whose names were such a scar to the collective psyche of all the magical races. No one said ‘Salem’ without a thought for what had happened there. The familiar narrative was that many women, who were in no way witches, had been executed by their ‘upstanding’ neighbors. Truthfully, some of them had indeed been witches, though they had been just as innocent of wrongdoing as the humans with whom they had died.

  As a vampire, I should have been able to watch dispassionately, with a degree of remove; they were not my people, after all. But to watch that inhumanity, I found deeply disturbing. Back then I was still a killer, a monster, with blood on my fangs and countless dead to my name. But I killed to eat, to survive. Those I watched killed for their own smug self-righteousness, and dared to call it justice. I did not stay in the town long back then, but I did not feed all the while I was there—a rarity for me. I was afraid that any suspicious death might be laid at the door of another innocent woman, and I did not wish such to be on my conscience. It had been curious to learn I even possessed a conscience, but Salem left its mark on all those who visited.

  The affair gave me a view of humans that has never quite left me. It taught me that a monster is something you can choose to be. And, eventually, I chose a different path.

  At eight o’clock, I went downstairs and sat in the bar to wait for my guest.

  “Can I get you anything, sir?” asked the attentive barman. “Glass of wine?”

  I held up a hand. “I do not drink… wine.”

  As a vampire, every now and then, it is quite fun to pull out the full Bela Lugosi, just to see if people pick up on it. This man did not—probably too young to remember the film.

  “I am waiting for a guest,” I explained.

  The barman gave a friendly nod and went on his way. I sat back to wait. I did not have to wait long.

  The door of the hotel opened to admit a tall man with an athletic stride and brownish hair. His tweed jacket, complete with elbow patches, screamed ‘instructor’, even if nothing else about him did. I raised a hand to attract his attention, and Stone Draper came to join me.

  “Sorry I’m late.” He flashed a devil-may-care smile that made me wonder, not for the first time, if I had picked the right man for this assignment.

  “I trust you are more punctual for your classes,” I said.

  “Always,” Stone replied. “It’s good to see you, Sinclair. How is life on the Carpathia?”

  “The same.”

  The young man shrugged. “It’s a good life for those who enjoy that kind of thing.”

  “But not for you?” There were dichotomies about Stone I always felt the urge to probe.

  He laughed. “Don’t get me wrong; a floating paradise of sexual excess and all the blood you can drink sounds like fun. But I’d prefer to leave that until I’m older—sounds like a good retirement plan. For now there’s too much of the wanderer in me to settle down. Besides,” he gave me a cocky look that seemed full of his gypsy heritage, “turns out there’s plenty of sex about, if you know where to look.”

  “What an odd direction this conversation has taken,” I noted. “How is Emma?”

  “She’s not the top of the class, if that’s what you’re asking,” shrugged Stone. “Wouldn’t call her a natural where magic is concerned by any means, but she tries hard.”

  “Her academic record is of almost no interest to me.”

  Stone nodded, suddenly serious. “Of course. I’ve been looking out for her. So far, nothing. I’ve not seen or sensed anything like a threat.”

  I relaxed a bit. Perhaps I was worrying about nothing? All I had to go on was Laucian’s story about the Vryloka and that had been thin and full of holes. I might not have given it a second thought, had it not been for the potential threat to the girl I still regarded as my niece. With her safety at stake, I had set about finding her protection, and Stone had, at the time, seemed like the best option.

  Why? You should ask? For starters, he was a skilled magic user, which was not always the case with vampires, so he could pose as a teacher at Emma’s school of Elmington. Stone’s was gypsy magic, but that still counted. Besides this, he was physically strong and fit, which might be necessary around the Vryloka—I did not know how they might choose to attack. He also had a sort of native cunning and ingenuity, the ability to think quickly on his feet, that spoke of a man who had been looking after himself for most of his life.

  Though I was loath to admit to the truth of some of what Laucian had said to me, there were few vampires on the Coalition ships who I could rely upon to protect Emma in the same way. In addition to this, Stone had one major advantage over virtually every other vampire I could lay hands on; he could go out during the day.

  Exactly why that was, was complicated, and it had certainly surprised me to discover this ability of his. It seemed to do with his gypsy heritage. Vampires and gypsies have a history all their own that stretches back centuries, and that history does, on occasion, throw up abnormalities like Stone.

  There was one other reason that Stone was particularly suitable for the task; he owed me a favor. In fact, he owed me his life.

  “Tell me more about Emma.” I tried to keep my voice level and my questions professional, but a part of me was straining to know more about her. We had once been so close and now she felt like a link to the life I had left behind, as well as to Bryn and Rowan. It now occurred to me that perhaps I had been pleased that Laucian had given me this excuse to pry into my niece’s life.

  “She’s a bright enough girl,” said Stone. “Has some good friends among her peers. And some enemies as well, which I guess is the way of teenagers.” Stone was not that much older than Emma to look at—but he had been turned over a century ago.

  “No one trying to hurt her?” I checked.

  “Not physically,” replied Stone. “Some bullying, and tormenting. You know what girls are like at that age.”

  “Not really,” I shook my head.

  “It’s like putting two weasels in a sack together,” explained Stone with a shrug. “But don’t worry about Emma. Like I said, she has friends. An odd pair, but faithful, and you can’t put a price on that.”

  “They will not protect her if the Vryloka come.”

  Stone raised a finger and gave me that smug look of his again. “Way ahead of you, Sinclair. I found a way to protect her, even when I’m not around.”

  He wanted me to be impressed, but I was not going to give him that satisfaction. Not until I knew it was deserved, anyway.

  “Now she has a familiar.”

  “A familiar?”

  “A giant snake—the most fearsome of familiars,” Stone responded with a grin and a quick nod. He was quite pleased with himself.

  “Indeed.” Truth be told, I was impressed. That was a good idea.

  Stone shook his head. “The Saints alone know how she’s going to carry the thing around though. I might have to give her a bag of carrying.” There was a pause. “Sinclair?”

  I had drifted off, ceasing to listen to what he was saying. I looked up again. “Bag of carrying. Yes. Such will save her shoulders and back.”

  Stone looked at me, his keen eyes searching my face. “Something wrong?”

  I gave him a half-smile. “The last time I saw Emma, her preferred familiar would have been a fluffy bunny or a guinea pig. Something of that description.”

  “She’s grown up well,” said Stone.

  Of course she had. Bryn had done a good job with her and was no doubt doing a similarly good job with Rowan. I just wished I had been there. I wished I was there still.

  “So, no signs of danger?” I refocused on the subject in hand.

  “Not so far.”

  I nodded, thoughtfully. There was a chance that all this was for nothing and Laucian was dreaming up the danger. Stone’s gypsy blood was n
o doubt already calling him back to the road; he hated to be settled, even for a matter of weeks. Perhaps I could thank him and let him go on his way…

  But something inside me said this matter was not finished yet.

  “I am sorry to have to ask you—I know there are places you would rather be than a posh school, nurse-maiding a child—but I want you to stay on.”

  “Of course.”

  I was surprised, for I was expecting some resistance. “I know it is a lot to ask, but you do owe me.”

  “I already said yes.” He gave me that cocky smile. “I am more than happy to keep watching Emma.”

  The inflection of his voice caught my attention and I felt my fists tighten. I controlled the anger and smiled back at him. “I am sure she is worth watching. The Wilkins women are all quite enchantingly beautiful.”

  Caught off-guard, Stone gave a stupid grin. “Emma certainly is… enchantingly beautiful.”

  I kept smiling, but as my gaze met his, my eyes were blue steel. “If you touch her, I kill you.”

  Stone’s parents had died when he was a child and he had been raised by an uncle who had beaten him regularly to keep him in line. When he was ten, he ran off and began fending for himself for the rest of his childhood (though you could barely call it a childhood). Stone had seen too much of life at a young age, but it meant that when someone threatened him, he knew when they were serious and when they were bluffing. Right now, I saw the anxiety in his eyes that meant he had understood me in no uncertain terms.

  “I… I didn’t mean…” he stuttered.

  “Yes, you did,” I said calmly. “I am sure Emma is as beautiful as her mother and aunt and there is no reason for you not to be attracted to her. Except that she is my niece and she is under my protection.”

  Stone could be an arrogant son of a bitch—no harm in that, I was quite the same in my youth. Perhaps I still was. But Stone was smart enough to know that if it came to a fight between the two of us, I would barely bruise my knuckles while he would be reduced to a sticky, red smear upon the pavement.